The "New Horizons" mod for the 2003 Pirates of the Caribbean game by Akella is a continuation of the famous Build mod series. Developed as Pirates of the Caribbean Build 14, "New Horizons" continues where Build 13 left off, adding more new content than ever before.

Ever since the original game, there was a choice between Arcade and Realistic. However, the Build Mod adds a lot more differences between the two. This article explains the current changes and what more is intended to be done.

The original game had an Arcade and Realistic mode that was related to only the ships' sailing characteristics, especially the influence of the wind direction on your ship. However, with the latest Build 14 Beta releases, Realistic Game Mode holds a lot more differences than just that.

For future Build versions, we have started on a project to simplify the Advanced Options menu. The intention is to end up with less specific options for players to sift through in the game's Advanced Options menu. However, there is the risk that we go too far with this, imposing unwanted limitations on players and going against the original Build Mod setup of a fully customizable game experience. Therefore, if you have any opinions on this matter, please join our discussion!

But in the meantime, let's get on with the actual differences between the game modes. Hopefully this will answer various questions we've been seeing both in our ModDB comments and on our own PiratesAhoy! forums.

Arcade Game Mode

While Realistic Game Mode is now the Build default, the Arcade version is still readily available in the game's Options for those players who aren't interested in all the limitations that real life might have put on sailors of the time and just want to have a good time without having to worry about all that.

- Arcade Sailing Mode:
. Ships can sail into the wind (but slowly)
. Different rig types do not influence sailing characteristics very much
. Ships sail as if on rails; no counter-rudder need to be applied to stop a turn

- Spyglasses:
. Work as in the stock game without any inaccuracies
. Information shown is independent from distance
. Depending on the quality of your spyglass, it can tell you: Nation, Ship name, Ship type, Cannon type of other ship, Hull and sail damage, Number of crewmembers, Speed, Charge type (eg. balls, chainshot or grape)

- Worldmap Sailing:
. Worldmap sailing is available as long as you are outside "combat range" of any enemy ships
. DirectSail is always available to sail from island to island while remaining in 3D sailing mode, including various encounters at sea
. A "log of all ships at sea" is shown upon reaching an island

- Sail To:
. Available for all ships at sea and all land locations
. Sail To in battle only available to ships within the "combat range"
. All ship icons show their damage values in the Sail To Menu

- Fast Travel:
. Available for all land locations

- Danger Pre-Warning:
. Ashore, when there's enemies around, the red flashing icon and danger music start as soon as you enter the location
. At sea, the sea battle music starts as soon as enemy ships are within combat range

Realistic Game Mode

This mode is intended to encourage a more immersive game experience that is closer to what life must have been as a captain at sea in the Age of Sail. Note that while Patch 5 disabled all information from the spyglass, this has now been transferred to Iron Man Game mode (see below).

- Realistic Sailing Mode:
. Ships can not sail into the wind; they will be blown backwards
. Different rig types greatly influence sailing characteristics
. Ships require counter-rudder to be applied to stop a turn
. For more information, see The Willemstad Builders' Trials

- Spyglasses:
. Have inaccuracies based on the new custom values by Black Bart
. Information shown depends on the distance to the other ship; sometimes you can gather the information from your view through the spyglass before your spyglass tells you
. Depending on the quality of your spyglass, it can tell you: Nation, Ship name, Ship type, Cannon type of other ship, Hull and sail damage, Number of crewmembers, Speed, Charge type (eg. balls, chainshot or grape)

- Worldmap Sailing/DirectSail:
. Worldmap sailing is available as long as you are outside "combat range" of any enemy ships
. DirectSail is always available to sail from island to island while remaining in 3D sailing mode, including various encounters at sea
. No "log of all ships at sea" shown upon reaching an island; you'll have to discover the ships yourself

- Sail To:
. Available for all ships at sea, except:
. Disabled for all ships that are too close to you (no instant-teleports to right next to the enemy ship)
. Disabled for all ships that, based on your speed relative to the other ship's speed, you cannot overtake
. Ship icons do NOT show the damage values in the Sail To Menu; use your spyglass for this instead
. Sail To for land locations only available after you have manually found the location yourself first (use the buyable maps from the item traders to find all shore and town locations)

- Fast Travel:
. Disabled for most locations, until you manually discovered them by walking through town

- Danger Pre-Warning:
. Ashore, when there's enemies around, the red flashing icon and danger music doesn't start until they actually draw their swords.
This way, you are not pre-warned of any impeding danger.
. At sea, the sea battle music still starts as soon as enemy ships are within combat range.

Iron Man Mode

In Patch 6 a new mode has been introduced, named "Iron Man Mode". This is intended for those players who just don't think Realistic Game Mode is quite realistic enough. Where Realistic Game Mode contains some compromises in realism, this mode enforces players to do all sailing manually and removes all magical abilities from the spyglass and interfaces.

Note: This setting in the Advanced Options Menu is INDEPENDENT from the Arcade/Realistic switch, so you could play Iron Man Arcade Game Mode if you would want to

- Spyglasses:
. All spyglass additional information disabled; they only enlarge the view so you have to do the observations yourself
. Pay special attention to ship type, colour scheme and -when closer- the flags to discover the encounter's nationality and therefore whether they are hostile or not
. Exception: ship's name is shown for ships very close to you for quest purposes

I'm not sure "streamlining" settings by linking options to different modes like this is a good idea, I don't like the realistic game mode with all its limitations and slow pace but I do love the options that you seem to be linking with it and removing from the arcade game mode.

Well, at the moment we haven't done away for definite with any of the settings we've got and we'll probably end up keeping most. Is there any particular setting in Advanced Options that you definitely DON'T care about?

The advanced options that I don't think are needed are those that don't seem to affect gameplay much but are more like cheat like player starting level/money/wealth, the brothel, lock open setting then the gfx options that probably don't affect most players now like particles and effects.
Also being able to change spyglass back to realistic in arcade game mode and being able to make it unmoded in realistic game mode would be nice.

Thanks a lot. The starting cheat options are definitely going and I think the graphics ones too. Some people apparently do like the lock/pickpocket settings because they find it annoying, so we might keep that but move it to PROGRAM\InternalSettings.h .

On the spyglass, that makes me wonder what SHOULD be the difference between Arcade and Realistic Game Mode. Above article describes what it IS at this time, but we're still trying to come to terms with what we actually want. Thoughts on this would be appreciated too. :-)